Pages

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

What
happens when the soundtrack of your life collides with the sound track of your
existence? When a marginalized member of society is on the outside of the
marginalized group? I am an African-American woman. Born to working-class
bootstrapping parents. Who bought and believed in the American dream.

We
left the segregated west side of Chicago for the desegregated but not
integrated south side of the city. At the time we thought they were one and the
same; we learned they are not.

It was a glorious time—my childhood. A time of Rhythm
and Blues, a time of P-funk., a time of Soul—music that soothed. It was Black
music for Black people. big afros, dashikis, fists raised in salute to our
brothers and sisters in the struggle for equality. My family traveled the road
of James Brown, Say It Loud I’m Black and
I’m Proud straight to Roseland—a working class community on the far south
side. We hummed the tune of the Stylistics Ooh,
ooh, child things are going to get easier because we had knocked on the door
of integration, and opened—or it seemed. We were Black; we were beautiful; we
were proud.

We
had ushered in another migration of bodies moving toward something better—we
hoped. We prayed.And for a while it
seemed like we might find that Stairway
to Heaven, as music merged into an amalgamation of colorless songs. We
believed Sweet Dreams Are Made of Thiswho we to disagree in the land of milk
and honey?

This
pseudo-migration created degrees of acculturation followed by assimilation
which should have led to integration, but instead created another form of
separation forcing us into annihilation as we screamed, Don’t You Want Me Baby, Don’t
You Want me Now? as the White families moved out as fast as the Black ones
moved in. Then the businesses moved out, and the drugs moved in. First it was
those following Rick James Mary Jane,
followed by White Lines that broke
and cracked into something lethal that we could not escape. Now Molly is the
new girl on the block.

For
awhile I lived in the theoretical Multicultural Mecca that is Hyde Park, and
while Michael was King and Whitney was Queen, we tried to sink our teeth into the
dream that has become our nightmare. We stopped Fighting the Power of Public Enemy and drunk the Kool-aid of white
supremacy. And so the socially conscious songs that gave the world a peek into
Black America across the urban landscapes gave way to the modern day minstrel
shows and the self-hatred of a group of people caught up in excessive
consumption and greed.

Brainwashed
into believing that as long as they get theirs by any means necessary, then all
is well in the world. The new millennium was nothing new. It set us back to
where we started in the bowels of the slave ship—back to the realities of our
blighted life. So real is the level of poverty, so real is the degradation and
dehumanization , it seems surreal.

It’s
the gun-toting pimpled faced boys posted up on YouTube. The onscreen spilled in real life beef of Chief Keef. It’s the Bitch
Betta Have My Moneytrack of the
girls still in grade school working the track of Michigan Ave. It’s Bands that Make her Dance, when what she
really wants is to Dance With Her Father—again
or even for the first time.

We
should have been One Nation Under A
Groove, but we were Slippin’ into the
Darkness –of our reality in urban America—Roseland with t-shirts that
emblazoned with God Made it Roseland,
Niggas made it the Wild Hun’eds. I am not a ‘hood girl. You get no
apologies from me as I try to change the station from the static clinging to
parts of my life. This Noise they call
music reaching into my window early in
the mornings and lulling me to sleep at night. The sounds of music shared without
my permission from heart-bumping base that beats me all upside my head. Loud,
angry voices. Sirens. The rat-a-tat-tat
of a gun. Sometimes I call 9-1-1.But Flava-Fave
already said 9-1-1 is a joke, only nobody’s
laughing. Families are wailing against the unending violence.

Drake said we started from thebottom now we’re
here, but where is here? We went from ghetto, to savage, now ratchet and we're proud of that? The madness makes me wanna holla and throw up both my hands, but I hold onto
the beauty of my people. I am reminded that a lump of coal can be transformed
into the sparkling gems that the world treasures. And I hold on that we will return
to our greatness and know that we are
beautiful like diamonds in the sky.

Sunday, July 12, 2015

My nephew is sitting on the loveseat, and I am on the couch.
We are talking as we sometimes do—getting inside each other’s heads and sharing
our generational perspectives. The conversation pauses when he sees a jar of
shea butter on the brown ottoman. He picks it up, reads the name: Whipped
Shea Butter Mix--100% Pure Black Woman. “That’s racist,” he says. I
suck in my breath before responding. I
teach in a racially mixed school of Black and Latino students, and I am always
hearing one of my students utter, “That’s racist.” These words that slide so
easily off their new millennial tongues sound like someone popping gum too
loudly.

We have so misused the term “racist” by sticking it in places
that it doesn’t belong that we’ve stripped it of its power. It’s useless. It is
the limp dick of the 21st century. Everybody is prejudiced to some degree—some more than others, but
unless you have privilege and power to push your prejudice, you’re simply a
bigot and an idiot. To label everyone and everything related to racial
intolerance as racist is a failure to acknowledge the continued perpetuation of
racism in this country and its impact on people of color.

There are those who will argue the dictionary definition of
racist – a person who believes in racism,
the doctrine that one’s own racial group is superior or that a particular
racial group is inferior to others—is an argument to show that anyone can
be a racist. But a country steeped in racism, using a dictionary created by the
dominant culture is not sufficient enough to justify calling everyone who has
issues with someone of another race a racist.

When I refer to racism, I’m speaking of the structural and
systemic racism that has been used to advance one group of people while
simultaneously keeping other groups of people back. It is these institutionalized
practices put in place to continue to push People Of Color (especially Black
folk) to the outskirts of society. I think it’s difficult (but not impossible)
for POC to be racist. I admit that we can be as prejudiced and as bigoted as
anyone, but to truly qualify for the title of racist—we have to have power and
privilege which is almost nonexistent.

It’s challenging to explain power and privilege to young
people, but I try. With everything happening all over the country as of late, I
have more examples of power and privilege than I need to get my point across.
From Trayvon Martin’s tragic death to the horrific massacre in South Carolina,
racism has reared its ugly head and demonstrates how deadly power and privilege
push prejudice and create toxic racist situations.

In June of 2014, Janelle Ambrosia, a white woman’s verbal
slew of racial slurs against a Black man in a parking lot, went viral. Because
of her rant, Ambrosia was quickly labeled a racist. While I thought Ambrosia
was definitely a bigot, I don’t know if she was a racist. From the video it’s
hard to imagine her not having any ill feelings toward African Americans, but
unless she does more than spew her hateful thoughts, she’s a bigot.

A person moves from bigotry to racism by their actions.
Paula Deen and Donald Sterling are racists. They’re powerful people who used
their power and their privilege to push their prejudice. Deen was sued by a
former employee for discriminatory practices when she worked in the restaurant
owned by Deen and her brother. Sterling refused to rent to Latinos and Blacks.
My nephew and I talk about recent incidents, and I also use current events in
my classroom. The rash of incidents involving POC and the police are examples
of racism at its finest, but this is not a dig against police officers. Police
are the gatekeepers of the status quo, and the status quo in America is racist
to its core.

In October of 2004, Frank Jude, a biracial exotic dancer
(Black in America) and his friend were invited by two women to a party at the
home of a police officer. Jude and his friend felt uncomfortable, so they
decided to leave, but they were confronted by the police officer hosting the
party, and Jude was accused of stealing a badge and a wallet. Jude denied
taking anything. The police severely beat and kicked Jude. One of the women
called 9-11, and when the officers arrived on the scene, one of them joined the
beating while the other one watched. The officers stuck a pen in Jude’s ears
and cut his face. Jude was arrested and taken to jail. The stolen items were
not recovered.

Eventually charges were brought against the officers, but
none of the officers (mostly White) admitted to seeing anything. Instead they
erected a code of silence refusing to speak out against their fellow officers
in a clear-cut case of wrong doing. The case was stalled for months.
Prosecutors initially failed to interview key witnesses. Three officers were
charged and acquitted in state court, but were then charged with civil rights
violations in federal court. Seven officers were convicted. In the end, nine
officers were fired, and Jude settled for $2 million. This is racism; this is privilege
+ prejudice + power in full, living color. These men used their badges to push
their prejudice to the extreme.

Dylan Roof walked into a church and asked for the pastor by
name. He sat with the members of AME Emanuel Church, a church rooted in
activism, for an hour before opening fire. He murdered nine people. He told
friends that he intended to start a race war. A manifesto attesting to his
twisted beliefs about Black people raping White women and taking over was found
on Face book. Roof was apprehended alive and taken into custody wearing a
bullet proof vest. He didn’t appear to be disheveled at all. I guess his
horrific crime spree worked up an appetite, and the arresting officers
purchased some food for Dylan from Burger King.

Now contrast Roof’s interaction with the police and that of
Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Freddy Gray and others. All of these
people ended up dead after coming into contact with police, and their crimes
were what? Brown was walking in the street and refused to obey an order to move
to the sidewalk. Rice was playing with a toy gun and was shot within two
seconds of the officer exiting the police vehicle. Gray requested medical
attention twice and was denied, but Roof got to have it his way. How can anyone
look at these situations and believe that any and all incidents involving
racial differences are racist regardless of the complexion of those involved?
Clearly light skin trumped dark skin in each of these situations.

Am I saying that all White people are racists and all POC are
not? No. But all White people have the privilege and the power to be racist by
virtue of the color of their skin. Oprah Winfrey is a powerful Black woman, and
if she decided to discriminate against a group of people solely based on race,
she would be a racist. The way people speak shows the way in which they think,
and it is those thoughts of prejudiced people that create racist policy. Words
do matter. But let’s not get lost in the rhetoric on race. When you are
prejudiced or biased against a group of people and you have the power through
culture, custom and law to push that prejudice, that’s racism and that, makes
you a racist.

This country has been rigged against POC especially African
Americans since its beginning. So, while we may be as biased, bigoted and as
prejudiced as anyone, most of us are impotent in the face of racism. There is
not enough Viagra or Sealis on the planet to give us the power to be
collectively racist. Labeling every act of racial intolerance as racist perpetuates
a false narrative that we are equally in this together; We are not.

Before I open my mouth to speak, my nephew says, “No, it’s
not because racism is prejudice plus power.”Yes!
I scream inside my head and pump my fist in my mind. These auntie-nephew conversations, talks around the dinner table at
family gatherings, and that Urban Prep education is paying off, I say to
myself. “That’s just the name of it,” I respond.

Saturday, July 4, 2015

I hear the pop, pop, pop of fireworks in the distance, and
American flags waving from two houses on my block. The smell of charcoal drifts
into my nostrils as the sound of house music fills the air. It’s the Fourth of
July, summer’s first holiday and I'm feeling it; not today.

As a child and a young adult, like most Americans I loved
the 4th of July. I remember holidays at my uncle’s house with his
special everything-and-the-kitchen-sink BBQ sauce. I remember both buying and
watching fireworks when it got dark. I remember feeling a sense of belonging.
Every red, blooded American celebrated the 4th of July, right?

But when I grasped the full meaning of the 4th of
July or Independence Day, my feelings became ambivalent. It was an American
holiday, and I am an American citizen, but my ancestors were not part of the
celebration of America’s emancipation from England. We went from indentured
servitude to an imported enslaved labor force. We were anything but free then;
we are anything but free today. And too often the red in the red, white and
blue is not only the blood of those who died in the American Revolution, but
the blood of Black folks flowing into the streets of America.

Since the Fourth of July was a day with family, I’d usually
eat at one of my sisters’ houses, and then watch documentaries or movies on
African-American history. It was my way of reconciling my Blackness with my
American-ness. And that has worked for me until now. People of Color are
treated poorly in this country, and Black people hold a unique place in
American history in that we did not come by way of Ellis Island on the ships as
passengers, but in the bowel of the ship as cargo. And we’ve been treated like
shit ever since.

The struggle for
dignity and respect for people who look like me is real. I know this because I
know the history of racism in this country, but I think I drifted off and let
my eyes close to the reality of racism and its impact. It is tightly woven into
the fabric of America. From Trayvon Martin to the massacre at Mother Emmanuel
church, I’ve been jolted back into a painful reality. I may have dozed off, but
my eyes are wide open now. There’s nothing particularly patriotic about the
plight of Black people in America.

Feeling exiled in the country of my birth on Independence
Day, what is there for me to celebrate? While others are reveling in the
festivities of the day, on this day, I say . . . boo, to the red, white and
blue.